The Press Covering Up Uncomfortable Facts

An old American tradition.

Upton Sinclair wrote back in 1919:

By far the greater part of the news which the American people absorb about the outside world comes through the Associated Press, and the news they get is, of course, the raw material of their thought. If the news is colored or doctored, then public opinion is betrayed and the national life is corrupted at its source. There is no more important question to be considered by the American people than the question, Is the Associated Press fair? Does it transmit the news?

And so the American media goes, through various major and minor scandals since 1919: the JFK assassination, Vincent Foster's death, the Oklahoma City bombing, the TWA flight 800 crash, and the 9/11 attacks.